Theoretical Advancement toward a Culturally Strong Nation: Paradigm Transformation and Strategic Pathways for Chinese Sports Science in the AI Era

Facing the opportunities of artificial intelligence (AI) era and the strategic call to build a culturally strong nation, it is a critical juncture for Chinese sports science to make theoretical reconstruction and paradigm transformation. The discipline’s core contradiction is the nation’s substantial demand for integrative, value-oriented theory, juxtaposed with the existing disciplinary system’s inherent tension, characterized by instrumental rationality, reductionism, and structural rigidity due to historical path dependence. Through a genealogical inquiry into the discipline’s history and a critical review of its current system, this study reveals the systemic dilemmas in disciplinary positioning, internal integration, and theoretical supply. To address this core contradiction, this study aims to systematically reconstruct the axiology, epistemology, and organizational form of sports science, and four strategic pathways are proposed: 1) Harnessing AI technologies to upgrade instrumental rationality and achieve research paradigm shifts; 2) fostering cultural self-consciousness to build an autonomous system of value rationality and discourse; 3) promoting deep interdisciplinary integration to reshape an open and collaborative organizational ecology; 4) upholding a people-centered orientation as the ultimate compass for disciplinary development.